Little Blue Marble 2023: World on Fire: Little Blue Marble, #7

By Katrina Archer, Lisa Beebe, Matt Bliss and 32 more

In 2023, fires raged across multiple continents, fuelled by the accelerating changes to the world's climate.

Little Blue Marble's anthology of speculative climate fiction and poetry from an international slate of authors collects the magazine's year of works of activism and hope for the future into a call for action to reverse the climate crisis.

It's not too late to change course to save lives and ecosystems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ganache Media
• Release date: Dec 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781988293233

Katrina Archer

Katrina Archer is the author of dark fantasy The Tree of Souls and YA fantasy Untalented. A professional engineer, she lives on her sailboat in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Katrina has worked in aerospace, video games, and film, and is a freelance copy editor and publisher of climate change site Little Blue Marble. Katrina’s work was a 2016 Library Journal Indie Ebook Awards Honorable Mention (Young Adult). She is an alumnus of the Viable Paradise and Paradise Lost writing workshops, and a member of SFWA, SF Canada, and Codex Writers. She can operate almost any vehicle that can’t fly, doesn’t believe in life without books or chocolate, and was once owned by a cat more famous in Germany than she is.

Book preview

Little Blue Marble 2023: World On Fire. Edited by Katrina Archer. A Ganache Media Book — Vancouver

If you are reading this book as a PDF, you have obtained a pirated, unauthorized edition, and are contributing to the marginalization of authors’ incomes. We hope you enjoy your latte, which cost more than an authorized edition of this book, and took a fraction of the time to prepare.

If you bought this book, thank you, and we unironically hope you’re enjoying it with the best latte you ever tasted. You probably tipped your barista too, because you’re awesome.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

2023 Ganache Media ePub edition

Compilation copyright © 2023 by Katrina Archer

The Longest Breath copyright © 2022 Lisa Beebe. Originally published in Prism Review

The First and Last Concert of Avalonia Jemison’s Peace Lily copyright © 2023 Matt Bliss. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Drawing the Line copyright © 2020 Gustavo Bondoni. Originally published in Italian in the anthology Solarpunk: Come ho imparato ad amare il futuro (Future Fiction Vol. 80)

Things We Do before We Eat copyright © 2023 Jason P. Burnham. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Rising Death copyright © 2023 C. J. Carter-Stephenson. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Brighter World copyright © 2023 Robert Dawson. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

No Room at World’s End copyright © 2023 Shiksha Dheda. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Microclimates of the Rich and Famous copyright © 2023 R. K. Duncan. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

One Last Bash before We All Hit the Road copyright © 2022 Louis Evans. Originally published in Fusion Fragment

Snail Tank copyright © 2023 Monica Joyce Evans. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Sing the Phoenix to Flame copyright © 2023 Jenna Hanchey. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Seeds, Temporarily in Their Bed of Lint copyright © 2023 Jordan Hirsch. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Veni Vidi Vici copyright © 2023 Patrick Johnson. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

I Think That I Shall Never See copyright © 2023 Stephen Kotowych. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Returnal copyright © 2023 Ben Lockwood. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Catastrophizing copyright © 2023 Katie McIvor. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Choose Your Own Extinction copyright © 2023 Mike Morgan. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Prairie School copyright © 2023 Christopher R. Muscato. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Sand Ship Builders of Chitungwiza copyright © 2022 Masimba Musodza. Originally published in the anthology Save The World: Twenty Sci-Fi Writers Save The Planet, ed. J.Scott Coatsworth, Other Worlds Ink, United States, 2022.

Shaping Lakes and Honeycakes copyright © 2023 Wendy Nikel. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Smiling Virologist copyright © 2023 Dan Peacock. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Rewilding Indiana copyright © 2023 Susan Kaye Quinn. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Chrysalis copyright © 2023 Don Redwood. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

You Are My Endling copyright © 2023 Julie Reeser. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

A Lot Full of Weeds copyright © 2023 T. K. Rex. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Martian Blue copyright © 2023 Keira Reynolds. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

A poem for retired lighthouses copyright © 2023 Catherine Rockwood. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Extinction Memorials copyright © 2023 Christopher Mark Rose. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

The Boggart of Campsite C47 copyright © 2021 Holly Schofield. Originally published in the Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day anthology.

120° in the Shade copyright © 2023 Susan Lee Simpson. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Haiku copyright © 2023 Lisa Taylor. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Shipwrecked Earth copyright © 2023 Wade Thiel. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Flavours of a Memory copyright © 2023 Catherine Weaver. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Pity the Squonk copyright © 2023 Kathryn Yelinek. Originally published in Little Blue Marble

Font Shree Devanagari 714 from oNline Web Fonts is licensed by CC BY 3.0

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-988293-23-3

Cover design by Katrina Archer

www.ganachemedia.com

littlebluemarble.ca

For Lahaina

INTRODUCTION

Welcome

to the collected stories, essays, and poems of Little Blue Marble from 2023. All of these works are available for free online because Little Blue Marble’s mission is to educate and inspire, not to make a profit. We thank you, however, because your purchase of this anthology helps us bring the world more great stories about the climate crisis, and keeps our mission on track.

In 2023 it felt like the world, quite literally, started to burn. From the horrific fire that destroyed Lahaina and took far too many lives, to Europe where fires ripped through Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, and my home country, Canada, where blazes in multiple provinces doubled the previous record of territory burned, it was hard to escape our new reality. Neither was Asia immune.

Billions of dollars of infrastructure lost. Countless lives taken and ruined. Wildlife and nature suffering at unprecedented scale.

And here we are, still subsidizing fossil fuel production on a global scale, with most governments likely nowhere close to hitting their carbon reduction commitments.

When smoke blanketed the east coast of North America, while I felt sorry for all the people living there, I have to admit a part of me thought Finally. Finally, after a decade of living on the west coast and putting up with summers of smoke for weeks on end, finally, perhaps, the people in the country’s power centres were getting a taste of what the rest of us now experience regularly. Finally, perhaps, they would get the message: this is what our lives will all be like unless you do something.

I somehow doubt it. But I can hope.

— Katrina Archer, Publisher & Editor, Little Blue Marble

SNAIL TANK

Monica Joyce Evans

The

restaurant was blue, like the whole place had been doused in artificial water, and Noma didn’t like it. She clutched her purse as she followed the hostess, nodded to the staff as she passed. The CEO was in the back room surrounded by fish tanks: three giant panels that held back corals, eels, and other rarities. Somewhere in the biggest one a shark was turning. They’re not for eating, he said as she approached. I don’t eat anywhere that serves meat.

Noma sat in the chair that had been pulled out for her. I appreciate your time. She kept her gloves on, and her purse.

I’m interested in solutions. The CEO’s smile was warm and charming, practiced. Four other people at the table gathered up materials, slid out in silence. All solutions. Unorthodox is my orthodoxy.

You’ve done so much good already, Noma said. Flattery was always a good opener.

The CEO leaned back in his chair. So, what’s your plan to save the world?

Noma took a breath, listened to the reassuring hum of the systems around her, protecting those little pockets of plasticless ocean. I don’t have one. But I can save Waikiki Beach.

He waited. Those sands were underwater, of course, right up to the doorframes of those expensive old hotels. It starts with corals, Noma went on. Reefs, shorelines, tide pools. We work with shallow ecosystems.

I’m familiar, the CEO said. People appeared and patterned the table with small plates of food, vegan and inscrutable, smelling like sea foam.

My apologies. Noma opened her purse. Carefully, she pulled out a small, plexiglass container which held a single shell: glossy, tapered, and whorled with intricate patterns as if it had been tattooed. In the restaurant’s lighting, it looked brown. "This is conus lecanoscopus. Noma opened the lid. A cone snail. And it’s going to save the ocean."

Explain.

She swallowed. Cone snails are weird. They’re predators, they eat fish, but of course they can’t swim after them. They use venom instead. He was staring at the blue expanse over her shoulder, fingers tapping. But cone snails move fast, evolutionarily speaking. They adapt specific venoms to specific prey animals almost on the fly, because processes in their DNA let them adapt instantaneously to new environments. My company knows how they do it. And we can use that knowledge to save whole ecosystems.

She had his attention again. You’re going to teach ecosystems to evolve faster?

On a planetary scale, it’s already happening. Noma put one gloved finger on the back of the beautiful shell. With cone snail DNA, we can keep up with it.

The CEO reached out as if to touch the shell also, thought better of it. Congratulations. Of all the pitches I’ve heard today, yours is the most mad scientist.

She would not say the word unorthodox. You should meet the Antarctic shelf guys, she said instead. I think they’re working on a freeze ray.

The CEO picked up something lichenous from his plate with a pair of chopsticks, dipped it in pale foam. Noma hadn’t been brought a plate, she realized. So cone snail DNA is going to save the world, the CEO said. What do you need?

Testing, Noma said. It’s a question of activating a particular set of gene sequences. We know where it is in cone snails, and where to find it in fifteen other species, mostly crustaceans, some fish. I need a piece of ocean for large-scale testing of our more viable subjects.

You want to release mutating fish into the ocean?

She looked down, willing him to see how stupid the idea was. So they can survive the next fifty years, yes. Because of this little guy. She picked up the snail, held it out so he could see the mottled pattern, like an enigma. See?

He took it. Well, it’s a bold proposal. He turned the shell over. Sucked in his breath.

It’s just the shell, Noma lied. The CEO put it down, prodded the small red mark at the base of his palm. The inner edge is serrated. No snail in there.

Fascinating. The CEO rubbed his palm. Really interesting proposal. He stood up, but didn’t extend his hand.

Thank you so much, Noma rose also. For hearing me out. She slid the snail back into its container and smiled her way outside.

On her way out, she passed a pair of nervous young men in expensive suits, chattering about mycelium. Whatever they were asking for, they’d get it, as the CEO became increasingly warm, comfortably emotional. Conus lecanoscopus was one of Noma’s favourites. Venomous, yes, but it made its prey happy, complacent, and perfectly content to loll around in front of the beautiful thing that might eat it one day.

As soon as the restaurant was out of sight, she made the call. One group in front of you, she said. Make sure you’re with him in twenty minutes, make your ask in twenty-five. Get it in writing. Show him the plastic collection drones, he’ll think they’re adorable. And don’t forget the antivenin, or he’ll say yes to everyone after you too. She hung up.

Save the world, indeed. Lots of people had crazy ideas, but Noma would make sure the CEO’s billions went to the right one. Not freeze rays or magic cone snail DNA, but ideas that actually had a chance in hell of working. Anything else was just too risky. Well done, sleepyhead, she said to the snail. Looks like you’re going to save the world after all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Monica Joyce Evans is a digital game designer and researcher who also writes speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple publications including Analog, Nature: Futures, and DreamForge. She lives in North Texas with her husband, two daughters, and approximately ten million books. You can reach her at [e-mail].

MICROCLIMATES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

R. K. Duncan

On

today’s episode, the breathtaking Salish-Pacifica estate of Darien Walton-Musk, biogeneering pioneer and microretail magnate. We’ll speak with Walton-Musk and his architect/companion AI, Pacifica, later in the program, but first enjoy the beautiful landscape of the grounds.

The border of Salish-Pacifica is understated, beginning with the five kilometre mist belt, where vapour sprinklers seed the air and soil with desalinated reclaimed water to reduce fire risk and maintain the estate at historical mid-twentieth-century humidity. Beyond the mist, the world’s largest remaining contiguous redwood forest rises a hundred metres into the always blue and partly cloudy sky. Walton-Musk has remained coy about the proportion of biogeneered FastRed™ trees among the transplanted old-growth specimens, and our horticultural consultants assure us they can’t tell the difference.

We’ll pass over the sprawling 114-room mansion of local redwood and Italian marble for now to look at this astonishing expanse of beach and blue lagoon. The white sand is imported from Grand Cayman, because the reef of proprietary nanocoral that keeps the water calm and Caribbean blue doesn’t produce any waste except the desalinated water fueling those misters farther inland. Salish-Pacifica is one of only three estates with a Walton-Musk proprietary reef, and he’s keeping this treasure close to the chest, so much so that we won’t be able to bring you any dive-cam footage today.

• • •

There is a special peacefulness to sailing, to moving on the water under no power but the wind. It’s like what I imagine weightlessness to be. I first experienced it as a child, a long time ago, when summer vacations and the middle class and the coast of Maine were still undebatable things, and the feeling of wonder that found me on a friend of a friend’s boat then has never fully left. There is a magic in the windblown quiet of a sailboat that removes me from the chaos of the sinking world, especially on